Ricky Gervais: Well, I've had a relatively good day. I've had a finger up my ass, but he was a qualified doctor and he tells me my prostate is OK. You've got to do it. But you do have to make sure it's a qualified doctor.

Michael: That sounds sensible. Not just get it done at parties, then?

Ricky Gervais and his partner Jane Fallon. Photo: Reuters

Ricky: Yes. And not a DJ who just calls himself a doctor.

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Michael: Thank you for speaking to us. Let's start at the beginning: The Office. When anyone writes a piece of television, I don't know if they ever have any real sense of its shelf life, or how long it might last.

Ricky: That's true, though I was very conscious of its shelf life. And I was very interested in the legacy of things. I suppose I thought that for many reasons. I thought I was the laziest man around. I didn't really get a job until I was 28 because I was a failed rock star and I worked in an office for eight years. The real office, the one The Office is based on. I'd always people-watched, I'd always mucked around, I'd always made people laugh at the back of the class at the expense of teachers and parents and I'd always been that bar room comedian, if you know what I mean, but never quite had the nerve or the inclination to do anything about it. It's funny isn't it, that you suddenly find the perfect set of skills for you. It's sort of luck, but everything I've ever done has been a labour of love, or passion. There is a great quote by Bob Dylan that I lived by before I heard it and it confirmed to me that I was doing something right: "a man can consider himself a success if he wakes up in the morning, goes to bed at night and in between did exactly what he wanted". I suppose I wasn't trying to be famous, in fact I feared it. I feared doing this. But when the opportunity came along to write this [The Office] it sort of seemed obvious and easy. One, it was influenced by those docu-soaps I'd been watching through the 90s, where normal people did their normal job but became famous for 15 minutes. And I was fascinated by that, what was our obsession with this strange sort of voyeurism? They didn't do anything, they didn't sing, dance, act or write songs, they just did their normal job, that we all do, but we all liked watching them. I'm still fascinated by fame, I'm still blown away by the absurdities, from the inside now. As much as I've tried to stay an outsider I do know that I'm a recognisable face and that changes your perspective on things; well, it doesn't change my perspective on things, but it does change people's perspective of me. I don't think I've changed because I became famous late in life and I knew who I was, and why I was doing this.

Michael: I think people do respond to you very differently when you're famous.

Ricky: I think I made it clear when I started that I didn't sign a deal with the devil, I didn't phone up people and say please, can I be famous, then you can go through my bins. I don't live my life like an open wound for a few column inches. I talk about the work, and things I am passionate about, though I did start this conversation by saying I'd just had a finger up my ass, so ... [laughs].

Michael: I'm the sort of journalist who understands the context in which that finger was offered.

Ricky Gervais. Photo: AP

Ricky: That's blown it for the autobiography now. That's all I had. So I was very conscious of the legacy. And I think that all ties into it. The fact that that I don't feel I'd tried my best at anything. I was one of those people who prided themselves on getting through exams so I didn't have to try, and I look at that now and I think that's such a disgusting attitude, and that's such a waste. For me now, the hard work is the reward, genuinely. I couldn't be prouder of The Office if it hadn't won any awards, not been watched by anybody. Do you know what I mean? It's the actual finished product that I am proud of. The 'doing it'. But because I'd always been a sort of people-watcher, and I'd lived through it and it was based on real observations, it was sort of easy. Even though I hadn't directed anything before, to me direction is matter of taste, it's a matter of bring able to answer a series of questions of yourself, seriously. And if you walk around a set it's as easy to change things as not. It was easy because we had something to emulate. It was real. And I wasn't burdened by any bad habits in acting, I didn't want those constraints, I didn't care about enunciating, about hitting my marks, about having two eyes on camera because documentaries didn't do that, they don't capture that, real people don't speak clearly, they speak over people, they fidget, there is so much more body language than is acted on screen. Most TV, they stand together, they talk clearly to each other, in real life people worry, they fidget, they touch their head. It was sort a study in body language for me. I just wanted to get that realism on screen, particularly as it was a fake documentary. So, no, I couldn't believe it was as successful as it is but I didn't really care, I never did care. And no, I didn't think it would last this long but I hoped it would and I tried to make it to last this long because I think it's better on its second and third watch. As we made it we were making it, we were very conscious of that and we left things in we thought you might not notice until the second or third time, as a little treat. And that's what happens in real life as well. Everything isn't perfect, things happen in the background. We also wanted it to be timeless in its sensibilities, the so the big issues we dealt with were universal. People ask why does it get remade by all these countries, it's so quintessentially English, but it isn't, its themes are universal, boy meets girl, a decent job of work and making a difference, it's quite existential. No one in the world doesn't identify with those themes. And also we tried to make the subject matter timeless and universal, it wasn't heavy handed on pop culture of the day so to speak, it was all about all those things. It about sexism, race, disability, taboo, embarrassment, do you know what I mean? Those things that never really change.

Michael: You and Stephen are still writing, you have a show coming up. Even the greatest collaborations over time there are pauses and hesitations. That has to be an incredibly strong, consistent true partnership. Why does it work?

Ricky: Loads of reasons, the first is obviously luck, that you would bump into each other on a planet of six billion people. That's got to be luck, except that you keep them or move on, so you don't have to stay with the first person you meet, if it's not working. So I imagine you could go through 50 writing partners until you found the perfect one, or maybe not. But it's not so much luck that we met, it's luck that we saw eye on to eye on most things. But you have to work at that as well. You have to find the particular blend. We're creating this baby, we're picking our favourite chromosomes we want to put forward and mix and match. If we spoke for six hours a day when we started collaborating, we were talking for the first five hours of that about what we loved and hated, our favourite films, our least favourite films, our do's and don'ts. Soon you find this big huge interpersonal platform and you stand where your Venn diagram crosses over, it's as simple as that. There is mutual respect, you've got to feel the other one is pulling their weight. And then I think the real secret, and I've used this with other collaborations - I've used this with Matt Robinson when I did The Invention of Lying, I'm going to use it with Clyde Phillips when I do Afterlife - it's got to be one veto and it's out. If it you come up with something and the other one isn't sure, either persuade them or save it for something else. When you finish a series, every single second of that series, you both have to love. Because that's where resentment starts, that's where you start going oh, god, yeah. And petty stuff like, if you're putting that in, then we're putting this in, or if you don't like that joke, I don't like this one. i think again everything comes out of playing, and trying things. We're locked in that little room, no one sees us write, we don't have to worry about anything, we don't have to worry about something going badly, because there is total privacy and understanding. You try it all out, and I stick it in the dictaphone so everything sounds improv anyway, so by the time it comes to the table read, it all sounds like real dialogue. It wasn't just typed in without it being heard, if you know what I mean. All those things. And all that being said, you could still get into a rut because there was no cross-fertilisation. I think it's important that you do other things. It's probably not most of my time writing with Steve, I've got my stand-up, Flanimals, my other work, acting roles, the Golden Globes, The Simpsons, but they all give you a slightly different discipline, so it hones your skills and you bring back exotic fruits to the table, do you know what I mean? We don't watch the same things on telly, we don't really hang out together, we don't really socialise, we're friends, obviously, but it's hopefully two worlds colliding. And the things we don't see eye to eye on, they're good too, because you sort of fill each others gaps. It is luck, but you have to work at it. Like any relationship really.

Michael: In Australia, there has been a culture of criticising comedians who venture into uncomfortable topics. But the best comedy has always been uncomfortable, and I don't know if comedy is under siege, but I do think the rules are being re-written around you.

Ricky: I sort of deal in taboo, in The Office, and in Extras, and in my stand-up because I think you should take the audience to places it hasn't been before, otherwise why bother? There's enough anodyne comedians out there that say exactly what everyone's thinking, what's the point of that? They're not challenging, they're not real observations, it's nothing I haven't heard before. It's a gentle massage; I want to give them chemo. I think that a comedian's job isn't just to make people laugh, it's to make them think. If there's a meaning to it, and a substance and a bit of a depth, then you're doing something. Now, here's the rub: offence, is never given, its taken. If you're not offended by something, then there was no offence, it's as simple as that. If you are offended by something, walk away. I'm offended by things all the time but I haven't got the right not to be offended, and remember this: just because someone is offended it doesn't mean they're right. Some people are offended by equality, some people are offended by mixed marriage, some people are offended by everything. You can't worry about that. And you can't legislate against stupidity. I'm not one of those comedians who thinks my comedy is my conscience taking the day off, my conscience doesn't take a day off. I can justify everything I do. You have got to be able to look someone in the eye and tell them why you made that joke. And if I'm doing stand-up and I go suddenly go, oh God, I hope so-and-so isn't in tonight, then I shouldn't be doing that joke.

Michael: I feel the same about journalism. I have worked with people who fretted about having to face people after they've written unflattering things about them, and I've always felt that if you can't face someone and explain your perspective, you're unqualified to write about them.

Ricky: People don't see the wood for the trees, they're offended by their own little thing. And I think so much of it is misunderstanding. I have had complaints all my life. I started with a backlash, and every week someone says oh, so-and-so didn't like that joke, and I go, I don't really mind, this is why that joke is ok. But it's usually misunderstanding. What usually happens it people mistake the target of the joke with the subject of the joke. So straight away, by definition the taboo of the subject makes it risque, it puts their backs up, and as soon as you start talking about race or disability, they go "ooh, is this alright", but if they listened and worked out what the real target was, it's usually not what they think it is. Like in The Office, when Gareth is talking about the disabled girl in the wheelchair and saying "there should be tests", so clearly the joke there is the idiotic moron who doesn't understand. Disability isn't the joke, stupidity is. It's usually middle-class angst. Most of the time, the target of the joke, particularly live, is our prejudice, our discomfort. David Brent walking over to the only black guy and saying "I love Sidney Poitier". Again, the joke there isn't race. It's about race, it's about Brent feeling uncomfortable around difference and not being able to cope with it.

Michael: One of the biggest furores in Australia concerned a sketch that mocked charities but because it was set in a children's ward, it was criticised for mocking dying children.

Ricky: That's an age-old joke. That's been happening for years. The old lady who is being dragged across the road by the boy scout even though she doesn't want to cross the road. That's what that's coming from. It's straight away flipping a societal norm. What all comedy does. It says imagine if ... imagine if that wasn't the case. That's what a joke is. That's all a joke is. I know what you're thinking, but think of it this way. Suddenly your brain has been tricked. It's a magic act, comedy. You think I'm going to go this way, but instead, I go this way. Ah, of course. We are dealing with a taboo subject there, but the target of the joke is not laughing at dying children. People are always going to be offended and good luck to them.

Michael: From a comedy standpoint, Andy's disastrous sitcom in Extras, "When The Whistle Blows", the disaster of that works comedically perhaps because we've seen so many examples of comedies which either from script-to-screen, or when they're adapted overseas, are mangled in translation.

Ricky: It was twofold. It was sort of there but for the grace of God go I, a sort of "imagine if ...". All I knew when I did The Office was that I had to have final edit, it had to be my way, I didn't want any interference. One of my favourite phrases growing up was "a camel is a horse, designed by committee". I told that phrase to Karl once, and obviously he took it literally, and said, well, I'd ask the committee, which one of you came up with the hump? Any slight compromise, anything that is done by committee, is going to make it slightly more homogenised. Which is fine, I am sure there are great things designed by committee, but I didn't want it because I love the creative process. For me the idea is everything. Nothing gives me an adrenalin rush like an initial idea. I love every aspect of it. So I sort of want it to be mine, really. I want it to have my genetic material, and that was the fun, not for any other reason really. It's very important that you sort of get final edit because the other thing I do is, I only try to please myself. You can only do that by getting final edit, because if if you are only trying to please yourself and you get final edit, you are bullet-proof, because if everything turns out like you wanted, it doesn't matter whether it wins awards, or more people like it or not, or critics love or hate it, it means literally nothing to me. I want to point, and say you do something, you do that, you do something. That's what I did, I used to be a critic, I used to sit in front of the telly going I could do better than that, and there's only so many times you can say that until you have to put your money where your mouth is. Good luck to anyone. They can do something better than me, as long as they do it their way and don't compromise. And always write about what you know, and everyone really has a great sitcom in them, or a great novel. People write to me and say, I work in a soup kitchen, it would make a great sitcom, and I say it definitely would, but only if you write it. It definitely would, but you've got to write it because you work in the soup kitchen, it's got to be your particular perspective. And the irony is, for all these people who do it by committee and take notes and take studio notes and focus groups and take off all the rough edges and worry about their demographic and do it a bit like that one before that was a bit successful, they could be big, but not for long, they won't be big for long, they got the floating voters of pop. They're boy-bands and you want to be Radiohead. Things that take a little bit of time to get into are an acquired taste, they last longer and they travel better. These huge home-grown sitcoms that get 10 million viewers in their own country, they're not played anywhere else, whereas things like The Office, every country in the world said, we haven't got one like that, we haven't seen that before. There are six billion people on this planet and if you do something that only you love, you'll be surprised at how many other people say, no, actually, I like it too. It's counter-intuitive, but people are scared. They get nervous and soon they don't know why they went into the business in the first place.

Michael: You're currently working on Life's Too Short, which has a UK and US broadcaster involved. Dealing with those two markets, speaking with those two syntaxes, a decade ago there might have been a feeling that the UK market was far more open to experimentation, whereas today the US is producing some very edgy comedy. How different are the two dialects, and the two senses of humour?

Ricky: I'm probably spoiled that I'm right in the middle of England, and I was brought up on that lineage of Monty Python, Peter Cooke and Dudley Moore, and John Cleese. But in America, I was seeing something else, I was seeing humanity in comedy, it wasn't just about challenging authority or surrealism, there was something bigger. It showed empathy. Laurel and Hardy nailed it a hundred years ago. It was about empathy. They were precarious. They fell over for our pleasure but they got up, dusted themselves off again and it's a beautiful thing, it was more than comedy. I love them. There was always a romantic element in American comedy, from things like I Love Lucy through to Friends. Friends was 50 per cent relationship and romance, and 50 per cent gags, so they've always had that. I think people tuned in [to The Office] for David Brent but stayed watching for Tim and Dawn. We hadn't really done that in England before, but that's straight from the American model. My biggest influence was probably Christopher Guest, that naturalism, but with doing totally absurd things and he got it from Laurel and Hardy before him, that "I'm with this idiot", that sweet stupidity, pretension, pricking the bubble, but in a very sweet childlike way, it was always men as boys and women as adults. Again, it was flipping a societal norm. It was undercutting this machismo, this power, but when it came down to it, sweetness will always beat comedy I think. I think you can have the best one-liners in the world but if the person doing them is not adding any value, if you don't like them, they're nothing. I'd rather someone come out, shamble out on stage, and tell me what a bad day they've had. They're falling over for my pleasure, they're telling me they've had a worse day than me, they're tearing their soul out. There isn't any room for machismo. I like gags, I love jokes, I grew up on jokes, I studied jokes, deconstructed them, turned them inside out, and then sort of moved on, and as much as I feel I don't do jokes, I do, I just disguise them. I feel you can see 100 one-liners by someone, they can be the best one-liners in the world, but they're exhausting, after a while without narrative or a reason to stay, you've got it. They could throw in a false punchline and you'd laugh because it's a reflex action. Which is fine, but it doesn't resonate, you don't really remember it the next day. Whereas if someone comes out and tells you a story, you can tell that story in your own words, but you don't miss a beat. If a joke is about syntax, then write it down for me and I'll read it later mate. I paid to come and see you, I want to know about you, I want you to tell me about you.

Michael: That makes me think of A Piece of Work, the Joan Rivers documentary. It's obviously very funny, but the part of it which stayed with me long after watching it were the scenes where Joan talks about her husband's death. She jokes through it, but she's joking through tears, and there is enormous humanity in it.

Ricky: That's exactly right. It sums up what humour is for. Humour is a human trait to get us through shit. We use it as a sword and a shield and a medicine. We need that. There is no better humour than rallying against the darkness. It's what its for. It's anaesthetic. I was brought up with that. It's no co-incidence that Jewish humour is modern humour. If you find a poor oppressed people, they're going to be able to laugh about themselves. They've made themselves bullet-proof. These people that can laugh at themselves, they don't need to go around telling people they've got to stop doing that. It doesn't hurt them. They've made themselves bullet-proof so they can take anything. That's the important thing. You shouldn't go around telling people not to say things to children, you should tell children not to worry about it. To laugh about it. Because then they're bullet-proof anywhere. You have got to have a sense of humour about stuff. If you have got a sense of humour about stuff, nothing can hurt you.

Michael: In a sense, perhaps, Australia's sense of humour has been eroded by its prosperity. And I've never thought about it in those terms.

Ricky: Australians. Honestly, I've never seen an Australian have his feelings hurt. I've never seen an Australian cry over anything.

Michael: Maybe that's our convict heritage. Our dislike of authority, all that mischief, all that misbehaviour.

Ricky: It's the sports gene. If you're not running away from someone, you're hitting something. Now that's racist, but you made me say it.

Michael: Fair enough, I will take responsibility for that. Thanks for taking the time to speak to the Herald, Ricky.

Ricky: My pleasure. I could talk comedy till the cows come home. I will leave you with a quote from Winston Churchill: "If you find a job, you really love, you'll never work again." I feel it's an absolute privilege to do what I do. Which is why, when I do stand-up, 10,000 people paid $50 or whatever to come and see me, and they've taken time out, they've parked the car, they've got a babysitter, I'd better have something they haven't heard before, do you know what I mean? I also cherish the gasps as much as the laughs, because I know where they're going to come, and the point of any art, even one as lowly as TV comedy, or stand-up, is to make a connection. And that's all there is, that's all we're doing, we're making a connection.

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